


Knitting Pretty

by persephone_bound



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Because by gods we need it, Boss/Employee Relationship, But Fairly Mild, Co-workers, Crafting to work through anxiety, F/M, His Good Boy Sweater is an ugly holiday sweater, Knitting, Mutual Pining, New York City, Soft Ben Solo, Ugly Holiday Sweaters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:40:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22341202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone_bound/pseuds/persephone_bound
Summary: Averylate fill for the @reylo_prompts:"As a joke, Rey knits her friend Ben the ugliest sweater on earth for his Christmas present. But to her surprise he wears it all the time. Rey doesn’t know why he likes it so much or why he refuses to take it off, though her friends think they might have some idea."- - - - -“Oh, a lot of people find it helpful to journal their thoughts and feelings, make lists. Or do crafts—needlepoint, crocheting, or knitting can be really good since they’re fairly self-contained.”Rey nods and makes eye contact and tries to not think about how much she hates journaling her feelings. Also, about the heat wave forecast for next week. She can’t imagine a less seasonally appropriate activity for the end of May than knitting a scarf. Maybe sipping a pumpkin spice latte while doing it? The mental image alone makes her start to sweat.Still, she has a window air conditioner, and a lot of time in the middle of the night she’d rather spend doing anything other than panicking quietly in her studio apartment. So maybe it’s worth trying.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 40
Kudos: 184





	1. Cast-On

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in the SW fandom, though I've been hanging out and partaking in the Reylo joy for a few years now.
> 
> As mentioned this a quite late fill for a prompt on @reylo_prompts from back in mid November, so excuse the rather seasonal bent this will take. All in all, the plan is for this to be only two chapters (most of the second chapter is already written), with an epilogue that I'm planning around Valentine's Day.

It’s almost summer when Rey’s therapist recommends she take up knitting. 

To Rey, feeling vulnerable and tetchy mid-session, it seems more like an insistence than a recommendation. Though, to be fair to her therapist of two years, knitting isn’t the only suggestion she offers. And since Rey often feels like the world’s worst therapy patient, the chip on her shoulder is probably of her own making. 

“Just something repetitive and non-self-destructive,” Dr. Kalonia explains. “An activity to keep your mind and body occupied in the moments when you feel overwhelmed by your anxious thoughts. Those moments when you suddenly feel the need to go inventory.” 

It took Rey a while to work up the courage to discuss her ‘nightly inventory.’ Which is the sanitized shorthand they’re using to describe the fact that she’s spent the last few weeks, waking up at two in the morning on the verge of a panic attack, and the only thing that seems to soothe it is to go through her kitchen—and living room and bathroom and secret under-bed hiding spot—to inventory exactly how much food she has on the premises. She spends hours doing this until she eventually falls asleep in an exhausted slump somewhere in her apartment. 

She’s getting, on average, about four hours of sleep a night, and it’s kind of fucking up her life a little. But still, it’s really embarrassing to admit to another person. Even if that person is literally being paid to listen to these sorts of mental shenans. 

Thus the weeks-long build-up in therapy. 

“What kind of activity?” Rey asks, unable to keep the skepticism out of her voice. She tries to be a good therapy patient and listen “from a place of curiosity,” but her mind is snagging on that bit about non-self-destructive activities. Like, she assumes fucking strangers is out. Not that she would do that anyway. Rey barely fucks anyone since she’s a) terrified of pregnancy, and b) a dumpster fire when it comes to most kinds of intimacy. One of the many, non-food security reasons she’s in therapy. 

“Oh, a lot of people find it helpful to journal their thoughts and feelings, make lists. Or do crafts—needlepoint, crocheting, or knitting can be really good since they’re fairly self-contained.”

Rey nods and makes eye contact and tries to not think about how much she hates journaling her feelings. Also, about the heat wave forecast for next week. She can’t imagine a less seasonally appropriate activity for the end of May than knitting a scarf. Maybe sipping a pumpkin spice latte while doing it? The mental image alone makes her start to sweat. 

Still, she has a window air conditioner, and a lot of time in the middle of the night she’d rather spend doing anything other than panicking quietly in her studio apartment. So maybe it’s worth trying. 

Dr Kolonia’s group office, is only four blocks from the Michaels in Chelsea, so on a high of post-therapy positivity Rey walks over and navigates the narrow basement aisles until she locates the textile crafting section. 

It’s a little skimpy, but still more robust than she was expecting post-cozy season. One whole side is devoted to yarns of various materials, thickness, and colors. The other side has a truly dizzying selection of pointy sticks, some of which she knows are knitting needles while others leave her baffled. They’re all labeled with numbers or letters, and Rey is quickly alerted to the fact that she knows fuck-all about knitting, and possibly should have done some research before this trip to basement crafting hell. 

Determined to buy _something_ , if only for the sake of telling her therapist that she’s taken some action-based steps, she goes the Goldilocks route. She picks a pair of needles that appear to be neither too thick nor too thin—one pair is as big around a wine bottle because why?—and then rounds back to grab the most obnoxiously colored yarn she can find within three feet of the aisle’s endcap. Both items clutched in her fist, she jogs to the register line and then gets the hell out of there as quickly as she can. 

Her evenings post-therapy are usually reserved for Seamless and rewatching a show she’s already seen a half-dozen times. Tonight, though, she forgoes an umpteenth viewing of _The IT Crowd_ for Google and her new crafty purchases. 

Knitting, it turns out, is way more involved than Rey realized, though most of the women on the internet, with their perfectly manicured nails, make it look very easy. Yarn, wound delicately through their fingers, seems to glide effortlessly back and forth between the needles, producing perfect rows of neat stitches. 

Rey, on the other hand, spends thirty minutes trying to cast-on, only to end up with a lumpy mess that more resembles a run-over caterpillar than the beginning of a scarf. 

She pulls the yarn off the needles, trying to undo the stitches, but somehow just ends up with a giant knot. Looking back on it, there’s a certain inevitability to the fact that she ends up tearing the yarn with a feral growl of frustration. 

Dosmit, her mostly gentle fur fluff of a cat, sends her a glare before quickly relocating from the couch to the bed. 

It’s not a great feeling, this gritty frustration of trying and failing at a new task. For the most part, Rey’s always had a knack for picking up new skills—she’s reasonably coordinated and therefore good at most games and sports, and she’s handy in a lot of different ways, from basic fixes around the house to auto repair, which she picked up in one of her foster homes. She enjoys the mind-consuming nature of a complicated puzzle and a set of tools or rules with which to tackle it. 

Of course, most of this was born from necessity created by a childhood of abuse, neglect, and abandonment. But those are things she’d rather avoid thinking about in the warm bubble of a post-therapy evening.

Either way, systems and logic problems make a weird sort of sense to her—she likes the consistency they offer, the solutions. It’s what drew her to computer science in college, and why she’s damn good programmer now. And she can already sense that once she gets over these initial hurdles, there’s something repetitive and soothing about knitting that will probably hold a lot of appeal to her. 

But right now, curled and knotted yarn unfurled in her lap, she feels like she’s about to lose her fucking mind. Does she need a manicure? Are perfect nails actually the secret to getting this right?

In the spirit of avoiding a patriarchal gender-performance shame spiral, she gets up from the couch with her laptop and pours herself a glass of wine from the day-old bottle in the fridge. Bent over the counter, she positions the laptop for optimal viewing and queues up another video. 

Everywhere Rey has gotten in her life is because she doesn’t give up. And knitting is no different.

*

“What’s this?” Rose asks, setting aside her plastic cup of rosé. She’s wearing a pair of large sunglasses, but Rey can tell from body language alone that Rose is as relaxed as she can possibly get. Not surprising considering they’re sitting outdoors on a sunny Summer Friday, the gentle sway of the docked boat beneath them a soothing rhythm as they sip their beverages. 

“It’s a present! I made it for you,” Rey replies. 

Rose eyes the lumpy wrapped gift on the table between them with a smile. Rey’s pretty certain the gift wrap is intended for a child’s birthday party, but it was the only thing at CVS that wasn’t blatantly covered in cake, party hats, or dinosaurs. Though, actually, Rose probably would have appreciated the dinosaurs. 

Rey nudges the package toward her again, and Rose picks it up and pulls at the paper until it tears sufficiently. Inside is a strange and knotted concoction that, upon removal from its heap, stretches out into a long, misshapen length of chartreuse horror. 

Rey has never been so proud of something so incontrovertibly ugly. 

“My god,” she hears Rose whisper, an emotion shining in her eyes that Rey suspects might be fear. “Um, sweetie, what the hell is this?”

“It’s a scarf! Isn’t it awful?” Rey replies, beaming.

“Truly, and I mean that with all the love I have for you. It’s truly, truly awful.” 

“It’s the first thing I’ve ever knitted—knitten?—and it’s terrible and born of a half-dozen panic attacks, and now, my friend, it is yours.”

Rose’s grimace softens a bit. She knows all about Rey’s nightly panic attacks, and her therapist’s craft-based recommendation. 

“Thanks, I think. Though, I feel like I’ve just been punished, maybe?” Rose replies, trying to fold the horror scarf neatly, but failing since the shape of it is so uneven, it seems to defy all attempts to tame it. 

“You did bail on that Kaggle meetup last week, so it’s the least I could do,” Rey reminds her while settling back into her seat and taking a sip of her pilsner. “I had to go with Ben, and you know he’s as useful in social situations as one of those misfit root vegetables that looks like it’s scowling at you.”

Rose snickers as she stuffs the scarf into her tote bag. 

“Yeah, but at least he’s a _tall_ and menacing root vegetable. So you’re less likely to get hit on by a roomful of mouth-breathing data scientists who’ve rarely encountered a snacc like you in real life.”

Rey balls up her damp napkin and throws it at Rose, hitting her square in the chest. 

“Shove off. I had to spend the whole night dragging that sulking man-baby behind me while trying to scout leads for a halfway decent temp to cover Kaydel when she goes on maternity leave.”

“Oh no, my life is _so_ _hard_ ,” Rose mocks, a smile on her face. “I had to spend an evening in the company of tall, dark, and handsome guy that doesn’t mansplain—”

“Because he doesn’t talk, full stop!”

“—probably spends all his spare time in the gym, and looks at me like I coded the universe into existence. Woe is me!” 

Rey rolls her eyes and slumps a bit in her seat. It’s not worth arguing with Rose again about this. Her best female friend has had it in her head for months that Ben Solo, prodigal son of Starbird Tech’s founders, spends all his time—when not at the gym, apparently—pining for Rey. Rose swears she sees Ben, at least once a week, staring at her from across crowded rooms and sighing like some Byronic hero. 

Rey’s experience of Ben is altogether different. He’s been decent enough to her on the few projects they’ve had to team up on, though they’ve definitely butted heads more than once. But he mostly just keeps to himself and doesn’t say anything. Frankly, Rey’s always gotten the impression that Ben doesn’t particularly like her. His expressions around her have always read more as “pained by indigestion” than “pained by the futility of unreturned affections.” 

Rey doesn’t take it personally. It’s probably just his weird root vegetable face since, honestly, he looks that way about ninety-five percent of the time anyway. Maybe he isn’t getting enough fiber?

And with that thought, Rey resolves, at least for this beautiful Summer Friday, that she’ll think no more about Ben Solo’s awful personality, unfriendly face, or probable digestive issues. The sun is shining, the boat-cum-bar is swaying pleasantly in the Hudson, and all's right with the world.

*

A reverberating _thunk_ jolts Rey awake, and it's a full thirty seconds before she realizes that the sound came from her wrist slamming forcefully against the headboard of her bed as she thrashed.

Her heart is slamming against her ribcage and her skin is crawling, and the frantic thump-thump-thump of blood pounding painfully in her wrist is almost unnoticeable against the roaring tempest inside her head. That won't stop. It won't stop.

She’s already crying and can barely catch her breath, so Rey sits up further in bed, leans back against the headboard, and tries, tries, tries to breathe evenly in a four-part breath. 

In, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. 

Again, and again, the feel of her chest and lungs, expanding and contracting against the racing thump of muscle and blood. She coughs a lot, gasps, and keeps at it. 

Breathe, two, three, four.

Tears continue to stream out of her eyes, and she reminds herself: this is a panic attack. You’re having a panic attack. You’ve had them before. What’s happening is fine. You’re going to be okay. You’re safe. You’ll get through this. Breathe. 

_You’re safe_.

When the tears have stopped, though her skin still crawls with electric energy, Rey opens her eyes and turns on the lamp at her bedside that’s specifically equipped with a low watt bulb. The glow is a soothing butter yellow color, and it’s just enough light for her to be able to locate her knitting in the basket she now keeps at her bedside. 

It’s July, and Rey is working on her first hat, following a pretty simple pattern she printed out to keep in her basket. Dr. Kolonia recommended that she try to avoid screens during panic attacks in an effort to decrease stimuli, and Rey thinks it’s helping. That and the knitting. 

The work they’re doing in their weekly sessions has definitely contributed to a decrease in the frequency of her nighttime attacks to the point that she’s down to only two most weeks. And the knitting has actually been a total game-changer. She hasn’t had to count food in ages, and, bonus, has managed to make scarves for almost all her friends, which have been received with varying levels of enthusiasm.

It’s summer, so she’ll give them a pass.

Finn, ever the supportive brother, gushed over his green and brown striped scarf. And when she’d given Poe, his boyfriend and Rey's coworker, a bright orange one of his own a week later, Finn had gallantly elbowed him in the ribs to make sure he smiled and said ‘thank you.’ 

Scarves she feels like she’s really gotten the hang of. This hat, though, is a tricky fucking customer. 

A few weeks back, she stumbled onto an online community called Ravelry where people can share their own knitting and crocheting projects, in addition to loads of patterns. There are free patterns and patterns for sale, and luckily for Rey, the functionality to sort through them by skill level. 

When she decided she wanted to tackle a hat, she quickly came across a few options, one of which involved using three to four double-ended knitting needles. That level of coordination, plus the fact that the yarn seems like it could just slip off one end at the slightest provocation, frankly, intimidates the bejesus out of her. 

In the end she went for a pair of circular knitting needles. But she thinks she may have bought a set with the wrong size cord length, because she’s having to constantly move a large loop of excess cord through the stitches in the round. Probably that’s why it’s such slow going. 

But slow or not, the rhythm of it is what she’s after. It’s a fairly simple pattern, with a wide ribbing that combines both the knit and purl stitch, which Rey’s only recently got the hang of. 

“Knit, two, three, four,” she whispers, her voice still shaky and hoarse as she works the needles carefully through one stitch, and then the next. “Purl, two, three, four.” 

Dosmit hops up on the bed, stretches, then circles once, twice before curling up near Rey’s thighs. 

Knit, two, three, four. Purl, two, three, four. 

In the warm pool of lamplight, Rey knits to the sound of her breathing and the steady whir of the air conditioner. Slowly, her heart rate slows, and the panic recedes back into the darkness.

*

“No. Fuck no, this is absolutely ridiculous! The client approved the framework weeks ago.” 

Rey is fuming, her hands planted on the conference table separating her from the current metaphorical thorn in her ass: Ben Solo. It’s the Wednesday weekly and she’s barely through her second cup of coffee of the day, and this giant toolbag of a human man has the audacity to defend a client decision that will ostensibly put them back a full week’s worth of work. 

“This is a vital account for us, and we cannot afford for them to pull out at this stage.”

“But they’re unlikely to back out—we’ve put in too much work already. _You’re_ just not communicating the options.”

At this point Ben is now on his feet as well, and Rey can tell it’s taking a lot of effort on his part to rein in his temper. He’s the project manager on the Ajan Kloss account, and while Rey is Team Lead on the programming side, Ben is still technically, from a certain point of view, her boss. 

Rey is a big enough person to admit: Ben is good at his job—he’s incredibly talented at seeing the bigger picture and balancing the intricacies involved in client relations. When it comes to the smaller-scale stuff, though, he’s complete shit at understanding the on-the-ground work it takes, and how minor changes can have a ripple effect that will unravel hours upon hours of work.

This is where Team Leads come in, and why he and Rey are, nowadays, frequently at odds when thrust together on projects. Which seems to be the case more and more. In Rey’s most recent monthly check-in with Leia and Luke, her mentor made it clear that she thinks Rey and Ben could be an enormously effective team, if they could just work through some of the “rougher bits” of their work style. 

Rey had only nodded while thinking that the only thing she’s enormously effective at when it comes to Ben Solo, is getting under his skin and making his left eye twitch with annoyance. Just like it is right now as one of his palms comes the table, mirroring Rey’s stance, while the other remains in a white-knuckled fist at his side. 

The energy in the room seems to shift, and out of the corner of her eye, Rey can see Poe and Rose roll their chairs a few inches back from the table. Ben must also sense this, because he suddenly stands up straight and takes a deep breath that allows some of the tension to leave his body. 

“Let’s take a fifteen-minute break,” he says, his voice calm. “When we come back, we’ll continue with Snap’s team.” 

Everyone quickly moves toward the door, Rey included. Until, that is, she hears Ben say her name. 

“Rey, can you hang back for a minute?” 

Rey, who is still facing the door, makes desperate eye contact with Rose, who just gives her a wink and mouths what Rey is pretty sure is, “Get that dick, baby.” Rey flips her off, and then waits until the last person is out of the room before closing the door and resting her forehead against it. For some reason, she feels like she needs a minute before she can turn back and face Ben. 

Dr. Kalonia has been having her work at focusing in on where in her body certain emotions and reactions are living. It seemed like a completely nonsensical waste of time when she’d first started a few weeks ago, but Rey can admit that it’s starting to help her better identify patterns. Situations that she’d previously thought were just causing her anger or frustration, she’s noticing actually feel a lot like the tight, hot clench anxiety. It’s making her aware of how often her anxiety is at the root of some of her reactions. 

Right now, for instance, her body feels . . . odd. The churning fury that had propelled her through most of the last five minutes has settled into mild aggravation, but there’s something else too. It feels vaguely like her garden variety anxiety, but with an edge anticipation—the pleasant, getting-to-the-really-good-part-in-a-novel kind of anticipation. And Rey’s not sure what to do with that, because she’s also starting to become aware of how frequently that feeling pops up around her interactions with Ben. 

By the time she turns back around, a few deep breaths later, Ben is sitting back in his seat. He’s also looking at her with an expression that falls somewhere between his typical aloofness and concern. 

“You okay?” he says, and the words slip out quietly enough that she wonders if he’s more worried than she thought. 

“Yeah, sorry. Just, trying this breathing technique that my therapist recommended,” she blurts out. And, craphole. 

Rey makes a concerted effort not to censor herself when it comes to the fact that she sees a therapist. It’s important, to her, to try and normalize conversations around mental health, to destigmatize therapy and anxiety and blah blah blah—she just maybe didn’t want to blurt that out to Ben Solo, okay? 

Especially since he’s now looking at her with his head slightly tilted, like a perplexed puppy. And, to Rey’s chagrin, it’s a good look on him. Makes him appear slightly less like a tuber.

“Four-part breathing?” he says. And Rey releases a breath on a laugh. 

“Yeah—good for dealing with frustrating project managers,” she responds, grinning. 

“Funny, my therapist said it was good for insubordinate programmers and fractured familial relationships.” 

Rey really does laugh then. Because apparently Ben Solo has a sense of humor and a therapist, and maybe Rey has a whole other host of problems that she needs to discuss with Dr. Kalonia, because those two things somehow make him even more attractive all of the sudden. 

“Listen, Rey, I know you’re frustrated about the Ajan Kloss setback—”

“I’m not just _frustrated_ , Ben,” she interrupts, moving to take the seat across from him. “I’m sorry for losing my temper, it was really unprofessional, especially in front of the teams.”

“Thanks,” he replies quickly, seeming to sense that she has more to say. And, damn if Rey doesn’t feel as though she’s suddenly _really_ looking at Ben for the first time—at his warm, attentive eyes, and the open expression on his weird, but uniquely charming features. Where are these thoughts coming from? And has his hair always had that oddly soft sweep to it that makes her fingertips itch? 

Rey internally gives herself a little shake, before reminding herself to _focus_.

“I don’t want you to think this is just hurt feelings. The changes they’re asking for are going to cause real issues that could add weeks to our projected schedule.” His brow furrows at this, and Rey feels a little swoop of . . . something she doesn’t want to examine too closely at present. She spends a few minutes outlining some fo the more pressing top-line issues, before working up to the heart of her concerns. “I worry that when it comes to requests like this, your first instinct is to immediately side with the client rather than sitting down with me or Snap or Jess to figure out alternative solutions.”

Ben breaks eye contact to look down at the table for a moment, and Rey feels a warm burst of satisfaction—it’s clear that he’s giving what she said serious consideration. He has the entire time she's been talking, and it's frankly a little bit . . . well, she's not sure. But it feels damn nice.

He looks back up at her a few moments later. 

“You’re right,” he says, and after a beat, his lips quirk up at one side and it’s the closest thing she’s seen to a smile from Ben Solo. “I think I tend to be so focused on managing client expectations and relations that I forego opportunities to work with you all on alternative solutions.” 

Rey beams at him—she can’t help it, it just bursts out of her—and Ben, Ben gets this panicked look on his face all of a sudden, that causes her to falter. Quickly, though, Rey recovers and smiles again. 

“I really appreciate you saying that, Ben. I think . . . I think talking through some of this stuff could really improve workflow.”

“Yeah,” he replies, still with that slightly dazed expression on his face that is, Rey is big enough to admit, maybe not as vegetable-like as she’d once thought. Ben blinks and then seems to clear away whatever was bothering him. “Let’s schedule some time this afternoon to sit down— you, me, Jess, and Snap—to look through some options.”

“Okay, yes,” Rey says, and damn if she can’t suddenly keep the grin off her face. “I think that’s a great idea.” 

“Okay.” Ben looks down at his lap, and his lip quirks up at the corner again. “Score one for four-part breathing, I guess.” He stands up from his chair, moving toward the door, and Rey follows. 

“Yeah, between that and the knitting, I’m going to be a completely fixed and fully-functional human being within a few more years of therapy.”

“Knitting?” Ben asks. 

He’s holding open the conference room door, making room for Rey to leave first. Rey swears she sees more than one head in the nearby cubicles quickly turn back to their computer screens. Bunch of nosy nerds. 

“Yeah,” and here, Rey points to the light cowl she has draped around her neck. The colors in it are these lovely muted jewel-tones she thought would be perfect now that autumn feels like it’s truly begun. Plus, when she pairs it with one of her faded band shirts and a blazer, it makes her look a hundred and ten percent more professional, which is always a win in her book. 

“My therapist recommended that I take up a hobby to help with my anxiety and panic attacks. Probably a testament to how bad they get that I’ve managed to knit most everyone in my life something over the past few months.”

Ben is staring down at the cowl with an odd expression on his features, his brows knit together as if he’s puzzling through a problem. He blinks, and again, his expression clears. Rey wonders how much experience he must have to be that good at masking his emotions.

“It’s clear you have a talent for it, as with coding. I’m sorry, though. For the reason you’re knitting so much.”

Rey looks back down at the cowl, fingering the neat, precise rows that are interspersed with more complicated patterns that almost resemble lace work. She was pretty proud to have finished it last week, since it’s definitely one of the trickiest patterns she’s tackled so far when it comes to fancy designs. She’s also damn proud that she completed over half of it _not_ as a result of a panic attack—she likes knitting quite a bit, and has found that she enjoys doing it while watching her favorite tv shows, or listening to podcasts, or even on the rare occasions she gets a seat on the Q train during her commute. 

When she looks back up at Ben, his neutral expression has slipped again, and he’s staring at where her fingers have been tracing the pattern of stitches, his mouth parted and soft in a very appealing way. 

“It’s actually really helped—I’m finding that I’m knitting without an anxiety motivation.” Rey flashes him another grin and tries not to stare at his mouth like a creep. “Plus, I’ve got big plans for holiday gifts.”

“Well,” he replies, running his hands through his hair, revealing a hint of his ears which are, well, bigger than Rey expected. And also flushed a bit pink at the tips, which is actually pretty charming. Damn. “I’m sure you’re friends will really appreciate it.”

“Nah, they’ve been subject to months of knitted gifts, most of which were frightfully crappy. They’re practically ready to revolt.” Rey looks over toward Rose’s cube on the far side of the large open office space they all share. A dark head quickly ducks down below the walls, and Rey wants to laugh. And then she gets an idea. “On an entirely unrelated note, Ben, you wear, what, a large in sweaters?”

Ben gets a pretty horrified look on his face before he runs his right hand through his already riotous mop of hair again. Rey only finds she's further charmed by both the nervous tick and his pinkening ears. 

“It _is_ almost ugly Christmas sweater season, after all,” she insists, despite the fact that it’s only late September. Ben’s eyes glitter with what she can only assume is the sweet horror of having conjured up a vision of himself bedecked in a truly offensive mélange of red and green. 

She’s just about to turn away, and leave him to his sartorial panic, while she goes and grabs a seltzer before the meeting recommences, when she hears him choke out one word. 

“Hanukkah.”

Rey turns back and cannot contain her blinding smile, visions of blue and yellow yarn already spinning in her head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy this, my love letter to my own very basic knitting skills, which have never progressed beyond the occasional cowl and a fancy cable-knit hat.
> 
> Also, if it was not already apparent, I know absolutely fuck-all about the tech industry, coding, or website builds. Please kindly excuse any glaring errors!


	2. Dropped Stitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _When Rey returns to the sofa, she purposefully ignores her knitting basket—and the possibly fucked up back panel of Ben’s sweater—and turns on a random episode of Bob’s Burgers. Hopefully the distraction will help her avoid the tempting spiral of her anxious thoughts. Because if knitting is supposed to help her with her anxiety, what the hell is she supposed to do when knitting is what’s causing her anxiety?_
> 
> _She barely makes it ten minutes into the episode before she has her laptop open and is googling knitting shops in the city that also offer advice or triage for desperate noob knitters that are in way over their heads. Knitters who have probably-definitely fucked up a project they are far too emotionally invested in._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this—my life went a little bit entirely off the rails since I posted the first chapter of this story. Hoping that the next chapter won't take nearly as long, but I'm having to move at the end of the month, so I don't want to make any promises.
> 
> Additionally, I'm adding an additional chapter, because it turns out these characters wanted a bit more time to get their ish together. I don't blame them—we could all use a bit more time.
> 
> Shout-out to dramieylo for inspiring a little plot bit in this chapter.

Rey runs through a few scarf and shawl patterns that require colorwork so she can really get the hang of the techniques before she attempts Ben’s sweater. It’s going to be a bit of a beast, but luckily she’s found an adaptable pattern online that should hopefully be good for a beginning level sweater-knitter. 

But knuckle-deep into an intarsia demonstration on YouTube, with another fifteen tabs open, Rey’s starting to worry she’s taken on more than she can handle. It’s only October, but according to Google, Hanukkah is slightly early this year, so she wants to have the sweater done by the first week of December. 

“Peanut,” Finn says patiently one evening while poking at a wok-full of pad thai. “While it is very unclear to me why you’re so invested in making this sweater for your boss—”

“It’s entirely clear to anyone who has seen the two of them interact for more than a minute,” interjects Poe, practically bouncing on his toes to interrupt Finn’s train of thought. 

Rey only rolls her eyes and takes a sip of her wine. Finn and Poe are hosting game night at their apartment in Queens, and though Rey doesn’t usually make a habit of getting on the G train if she can at all avoid it, she’s willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for her best friend and his charming, if slightly obnoxious, boyfriend. Plus, this week’s workload has been a raging shitstorm of endless site testing, and if she so much as thinks the words ‘delta ticket’ one more time, she’s going to throttle someone with the sleeve of her sweater. 

From the other room where she’s been setting up the first game of the night, Rose comes barreling into the kitchen. Rey’s begun to suspect that she has some kind of homing beacon for any discussion of Rey’s interactions with Ben. Rose has even started announcing that she ‘ships’ them and has charmingly christened their ship ‘Reylo.’ That term had put her on ‘friend suspension’ for a solid day—no Slack replies and a mute in the group chat. It took four apologies and a bag of “I’m really, really sorry” Bold Chex Mix for Rey to reinstate her to good friendship standing. 

“The Reylo energy is strong with this one,” Rose says, quickly sipping from her juice glass of white wine. “Rey is working extra hard to knit her man a sweater. Gotta keep that eight-pack warm.”

“I swear to god and Shake Shack cheese fries, Rose,” Rey warns her. 

“That’s not the only thing Ben wants warmed,” Poe adds with an exaggerated eyebrow wiggle.

Finn continues futzing with his noodles and tofu for another minute, silent and brow furrowed while Poe and Rose really hit their stride in their game of innuendo one-upmanship. Eventually, though, Finn gets fed up and slams down his oversized chopsticks. 

“Both of you,” he insists, pointing at Poe and Rose, “get the hell out of my kitchen, and let Rey breathe for a minute.”

Rose and Poe scurry back toward the living room, heads down and whispering before they’re even out of earshot. Rey hears them both cackle, barely if at all chastened by Finn’s outburst. 

Poe also works for Starbird as Executive Director of their digital marketing team. So he’s been in enough all-hands meetings with Rey, Rose, and Ben to be more than acquainted with Rose’s ‘Reylo’ theories. Bulletproof coffee in hand, Poe’s cornered Rey in the kitchen more than once to relay how Ben had been singing her praises in their higher-ups strategy team meetings. 

Rey will never, not in a million-billion years, admit exactly the degree to which those comments make her toes curl with pleasure. The shame of proving Poe and Rose right in any way is almost too much to contemplate. 

Once the kitchen is clear, Finn turns off the burner beneath the wok and faces her. 

“You like him,” he says, eyes clear as he stares at Rey with a serious expression. 

“Who, Poe? I mean, none of us like him, frankly,” she teases, trying in vain to avert his attention away from this line of conversation. It’s not that Rey doesn’t want to talk to Finn about this stuff, about her evolving feelings for her sulky, formerly hostile coworker. Finn is her oldest and best friend, the person with whom she’s shared almost all of her formative adult experiences. But something about this thing with Ben feels different. Fragile in a way that nothing has felt in a long while. Maybe ever.

Finn doesn’t even dignify her with a response, his bullshit detector easily targeting her lame attempt at redirection.

A quick peek past the open bar that separates the tiny kitchen from the living room proves that Rose and Poe are now fully occupied with setting up Ticket to Ride on the coffee table. 

Rey takes a deep breath, and feels the words come tumbling out.

“He’s . . . he’s just really sweet, Finn. Like, actually nice. And smart and funny in this sarcastic, dry sort of way that makes me laugh even hours later. And, christ, I think he might be part Ent he’s so fucking big, but he has this soft smile that, I swear to god, makes me go weak in the knees.” Rey’s breath leaves her in a sudden huff. She’s not said any of this out loud before, though she’s hinted to Dr. Kalonia that she might like her boss more than is professionally appropriate. 

“And, and . . . I’ve never felt this way about someone,” she whispers, her voice breaking slightly. She can feel a familiar prickling in the corner of her eyes, and dammit all to hell, she was in no way prepared to feel feelings tonight. But the words are like a tap that’s been turned on and is stubbornly stuck that way. “And I’m fucking terrified. I’m so scared, Finn, that if I like him too much it’s just . . . it’s going to end up hurting, because”—she pauses to breathe—”it always ends up hurting.”

Finn, without a second’s hesitation, pulls Rey into his arms. He holds her so tight. She’s never felt as safe with another person as she does when Finn hugs her. 

“I love you so much, Peanut,” he whispers, his voice warm and fierce. “And liking someone that much . . . it is scary.” He pulls back and looks her in the eye, his hands still gripping her arms. “It might hurt, but, Rey. You’re the best person I know, and you can handle it. And I’m just—”

Here, Finn hesitates, looking down at his shoes before he stares back up at her. His eyes, when they meet hers, are also a bit wet. Rey’s chest constricts.

“I just worry sometimes that you’re keeping yourself so cut off, so safe, that you’re never going to be really happy or let someone else in.” 

To Rey, it feels like her sternum is simultaneously collapsing and expanding, like a dying star about to go supernova. Because Finn’s words, they hurt so much—they hurt because they are precisely what she’s thought to herself so many times. She’s lain in bed alone at night, the dark a thick and present thing that gripped her heart, and she’s wondered what it would be like to be loved and seen, really seen. Wondered if she’s even worthy of that kind of love. Because, on some level, she thinks she probably isn’t.

But even under the weight of these words is the fact that Finn knows her this well. That he cares for her so much that she can practically feel his love and affection radiating from him. It’s one of the most beautiful things she’s ever experienced. And she feels both broken, and so very lucky.

A sob breaks through her lips, and she walks back into the safe, safe circle of Finn’s arms. 

“I worry about that too,” she admits after a minute, between choked back tears. “But I think I’m getting better, and honest to god, Finn, I’m trying. I’m trying so hard.” 

He squeezes her a bit tighter, and Rey buries her face into the shoulder of his sweater, his warm, minty scent filling her nostrils.

“I know you are, love, and we’re all so fucking proud of you, Rey.”

They stay that way a bit longer, wrapped in the comforting fold of each other’s embrace, until a familiar voice pipes up from behind. 

“Rey, I’d really prefer you not run off with my boyfriend. And frankly, I think it would crush poor Ben’s gentle giant heart.”

Without letting go, Rey turns her head to look at Poe. “Too late, the good ship Finnrey is happening. Make peace with your god.”

From the other room, she can hear Rose shout, “Pour one out for Stormpilot—the end of an era!”

*

Rey knows she’s hit a problem when she reaches the end of a row, and she’s three stitches off her count. 

No problem, she thinks. She’ll carefully pull out this row and start it again. But when it’s still not coming out right on her second and third attempts—and the fourth attempt somehow, infuriatingly, ends up being five stitches off—she feels the beginning of a familiar panic. Tendrils of some unable dread creep in to grip at the edges of her gut, a clench of nervous energy that sings through her veins.

She takes a deep breath. In, two, three, four. And releases it.

Deliberately, cautiously, Rey slides the completed stitches onto the loop of her circular knitting needles, and sets the whole mess of blue, white, and metallic gold yarn to the side before taking another three deep breaths, and going into the kitchen for a cup of tea. 

Dosmit pads slowly behind her with the air of someone not actually interested in what Rey’s doing, but nonetheless monitoring her journey to the kitchen on the off chance there’s a treat to be had. Once Rey has filled and flipped the kettle on, she crouches down and rubs her left hand slowly through Dosmit’s exceptionally soft grey fur. 

“I’m not going to freak out about this—it’s probably fine,” she reassures Dosmit. 

Dosmit stares back cooly, and then turns around to head back toward the bed. 

When Rey returns to the sofa, she purposefully ignores her knitting basket—and the possibly fucked up back panel of Ben’s sweater—and turns on a random episode of Bob’s Burgers. Hopefully the distraction will help her avoid the tempting spiral of her anxious thoughts. Because if knitting is supposed to help her with her anxiety, what the hell is she supposed to do when knitting is what’s causing her anxiety? 

She barely makes it ten minutes into the episode before she has her laptop open and is googling knitting shops in the city that also offer advice or triage for desperate noob knitters that are in way over their heads. Knitters who have probably-definitely fucked up a project they are far too emotionally invested in. 

She closes her eyes and takes another three deep breaths. 

Yelp, Google Maps, and a Ravelry forum all point her toward a small shop in the East Village called Revenge of the Stitch that’s apparently been around since the late 70s. Review after review sings the praises of the genius shop owner, Maz, who can supposedly “fix any TOAD.” According to Google, this means ‘Trashed Object Abandoned with Disgust.’

Rey clicks back through to the store’s site, and, wow. Her eyes may never recover. 

She’s certain some graphic designers might charitably describe Revenge of the Stitch’s site as ‘web brutalism.’ Rey, though, is fairly sure the page just hasn’t been updated since pre-Y2K. From the neon green text scrolling across a bright blue background to the badly sized photos and clipart clinging desperately to web 1.0 frame tags, everything about it is smashing the nostalgia button in the worst way imaginable. 

Despite the genuine damage Rey is sure she’s causing her retinas and soul, she’s able to ascertain that Maz hosts an “Open Knit (at your own risk)” meet-up every Tuesday and Thursday evening. 

So, with a slightly lighter heart, and a plan to stop by the following day after work, Rey turns her attention back to the Belcher family and their inevitable hijinks.

* 

Any expectations she had for a yarn shop, even one in the East Village, are blown out of the water as soon as she spies the sign above the door, dripping in swaths of different colored yarn, as if it had recently been TP’d by a roving gang of fiber artists. 

New York is fucking weird, especially in the ways it’s fundamentally rearranged Rey’s expectations of most things. In practice these preconceived notions usually apply to broader day-to-day concepts, like how much space a human needs to live (very little, apparently), reasonable housing costs (high), and the ease (or dis-ease) of doing literally anything ever. 

She has a habit of forgetting that this applies to random, peculiar situations too.

Situations like walking into what you thought was going to be a bog-standard yarn shop, and instead finding a warmly lit and tidy dive bar that also happens to sell the widest and most eclectic collection of yarn she’s ever seen in one place, let alone—and this cannot be stressed enough—in a damn bar. 

The tinkling bell above the door catches the attention of a short, dark-skinned woman behind the broad cherry wood bar who pauses briefly as she’s filling a pint glass with what looks to be Brooklyn Post Road Pumpkin Ale. 

“Welcome, welcome!” she shouts over the mild hum of people and low-volumed classic rock. It’s only half-five so there’s just a handful of patrons scattered at both the bar and the few round tables positioned about the room. The tiny woman finishes her pour and places the glass in front of a grey-haired older man across the bar from her. Grey-Hair is deep in conversation with another guy seated on the next stool who looks like an actual Bigfoot. After saying something to both of them and laughing, she looks back up toward Rey and makes a broad gesture with both hands, inviting her further in.

Anxiety is an ever-present part of Rey’s life, it is her constant companion. Sometimes it’s nothing more than a distant whisper. Other times, like in unfamiliar social situations or new places, it’s simmering right below its boiling point, ready at any moment to overflow.  
Rey takes a deep breath, adjusts her tote bag on her shoulder and walks to the bar, coming to stand between two open stools near the old guys. 

“Hi,” Rey offers, trying to swallow past the thick feeling in her throat. “I was looking for . . . for some help. With a knitting project.”

Her voice manages to go up at the end of the sentence, as though she’s not quite sure exactly why she’s here. Her brain, ever diligent in the worst ways sometimes, wants to immediately latch onto that detail and start pulling at the loose thread of why she’s such a mess of a human. Normal people can walk into bars without feeling like they’re going to puke with anxiety. Why can’t she just ask a question, and be confident and not feel like everyone around her is constantly wondering why she’s here? Why she’s so weird and such a burden on their time?

But Rey takes a deep breath and maintains eye contact with the woman behind the bar, whose face is breaking into a smile, her eyes glittering behind glasses so thick that Rey suspects they might be made from actual Coke bottles. 

“Welcome, child—I’m Maz.”

“You . . . you’re the owner, right? The expert who can help with any project?”

The older woman—Maz—laughs, not meanly, just as if she’s enjoying a private joke. 

“I’m no expert, but I know my way around a puzzle, and knitting, well, it often feels like a bit of a puzzle.”

“Yes,” Rey replies quickly on an exhale, feeling the knot in her chest loosen fractionally. Maz hums and nods. 

“I had a sneaking suspicion you might understand,” she says, then gestures toward one of the tables in the corner, nestled right next to a display of chunky yarns that are purposefully frayed at their colorful edges. 

There are already two people sitting at the table, a man and woman. Both are dark-haired and slightly older, and both are knitting while chatting comfortably with one another. They make an almost intimate picture, smiling and speaking quietly, and Rey’s not sure if she should intrude. 

“That’s Jyn and Cassian—they’re here every week and love to help people out of tricky knitting predicaments. Go introduce yourself. I’ll be over once I finish watering these geezers.” Maz nods her head at the two old guys beside her. 

“Hey, hey. I don’t know who you’re calling old,” Grey-Hair grumbles. Rey can tell, though, from the lilt of his voice, that he’s smiling.

She doesn’t stay to listen to them bicker, opting instead to head over to the corner table. 

The woman, Jyn, makes eye contact with Rey before she reaches them and smiles warmly. It’s the kind of smile that manages to immediately allay some of the remaining stranglehold of Rey’s anxiety. Something about her makes Rey feel instantly that Jyn is happy to see her, like she chats with new people all the time, even if Rey doesn’t. 

“Hey, welcome,” Jyn says once Rey’s pulling out a chair and taking a seat across from them, her back to the rest of the bar. 

“Thanks,” she says before admitting it’s her first time.

“Ah, yes,” pipes up Cassian. “Do not worry about being new—people are always popping in and out. A few of us are regulars.” He nudges Jyn with his shoulder and she smiles indulgently glancing at Rey and rolling her eyes. 

“It’s a nice break from work,” Jyn adds. 

“Same,” Rey replies. She’s not exactly ready to share her more medicinal reasons for crafting. Instead, she smiles and introduces herself to Jyn and Cassian and then pulls out her knitting and the printed pattern so she can walk them through her issue. 

The next hour or so is spent going back and forth over the last few problematic rows of Rey’s work, cross-checking it against the pattern. Rey’s really good at following the instructions, even the trickier bits. She definitely has a solid feel for things, and Cassian points out that her instincts are good. But even she knows there are insights and abilities that only experience can bestow. She’s just not there yet, which is fine. It’s only been six months. 

It helps that Jyn and Cassian are both amazing—they’re patient and never make her feel stupid for not recognizing a twisted or dropped stitch. Maz also comes over a few times to check up on their progress and offer her thoughts. 

“This is an ambitious project for a first-time sweater,” she points out after admiring how Rey’s adapted the pattern to suit her needs. 

Rey shrugs one shoulder and feels a small smile tug at the corner of her mouth. She’s feeling more relaxed now that they’ve successfully unraveled—hey-oh—the mystery of her extra stitches. It also doesn’t hurt that Maz has brought over a round or two of drinks while they’ve been working. 

“It’s a gift, and I just really want him to . . . well, I want it to be well received.”

“Him?” Cassian asks from across the table, his interest apparently piqued. “You are not giving that to a boyfriend, are you? Oh, I hope not.”

Cassian suddenly yelps, and Rey can only assume that Jyn has elbowed him, based on the fact that his hand starts to rub fretfully at his side. 

“Don’t start,” says Jyn. 

“Don’t start what?” Rey asks.

“Oh, child,” Maz adds, “He’s just alluding to an old superstition.”

“That is definitely—”

“Not true,” interjects Jyn over Cassian. Rey looks between the three of them, until Jyn finally huffs and throws up her hands. “It’s just a dumb superstition; an old wives’ tale, really. About making a sweater for a significant other and how doing it’ll lead to your eventual break-up.” 

“But, it’s not true, though,” Rey prompts. “Like you said, it’s just a superstition.” She’s fully set aside her knitting now and is looking between Jyn, Cassian, and Maz. 

“I do not know,” says Cassian. “I have heard of at least three couples who have fallen victim to the Sweater Curse.”

“Curse?” Rey repeats, her voice pitched a bit higher. She definitely doesn’t believe in curses. They’re illogical. Totally. Completely.

“Three couples? Please, please provide the receipts for these three broken homes immediately,” Jyn says. “Because I’m fairly certain you’re talking out of your ass.” 

Cassian, clearly affronted, starts to cobble together a list of supposedly sweater-cursed couples while Jyn gesticulates wildly next to him, poking holes in his reasoning. 

And Rey is still a bit concerned, honestly. 

It’s not, well . . . it’s not as if she’s even dating Ben. Or interested in dating him, really. Maybe. She just wants to give him the ugliest sweater he’s ever seen for Hanukkah. And see him smile or maybe even laugh. And then maybe he’d try it on, and they could laugh about together. Possibly in this version of events they’re also going for coffee at that Gregory’s across the street from the office, sitting in one of the back corner booths, surrounded by the low hum of midday chatter and the warm aroma of coffee beans while snow swirls outside. And he’d smile at her, that smile that makes her chest clench a little and sets her pulse racing.

Not that she’s thought about this excessively or anything.

“Don’t listen to them, Rey dear,” Maz says in a low voice and places her hand on Rey’s, pulling her from her coffee shop fantasy. “It’s just superstition. This sweater you’re making is important to you. Don’t let worries about ‘what if’s lead you astray. You know the truth that’s inside of you.”

Maz pats her hand twice more and then wanders off back toward the bar where she joins the conversation between the two old guys still parked toward the end. 

Jyn and Cassian are still arguing across from Rey, but the closer she looks at it, the more she realizes how little anger there is in their exchange. It’s clear most of what Cassian is saying now is just an attempt to rile up Jyn. And from the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, Jyn seems more than willing to go along with it. 

Rey smiles and picks her knitting back up. 

The truth is, that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to worry about the end of something that hasn’t really begun yet. This thing with Ben is, at this point, small and barely begun. It’s the first few rows of a new project, where everything looks a bit wonky and shapeless. At that point, there’s never any indication of what’s to come, what you’re actually going to end up with at the end. All you can do is follow along as best you can, and hope to not make too many mistakes as you go. 

And Ben, well—

“Ben Solo!” Maz suddenly bellows from behind the bar. 

Rey feels her stomach drop to her butt at the sound of his name, her fingers freezing on her needles. Surely, surely, this cannot be her Ben Solo. That would be too much of a fucking—

“Hey, Maz.”

Damn. 

Rey has spent the past month or so in varying states of denial about her crush on Ben. Clearly she’s still knee-deep in it if she can’t even be honest with herself about whether or not she wants to date him. (She does.) But the upshot of all this Ben-based interest is that, honestly, she could be wearing noise cancelling headphones on a crowded subway car full of tourists, and she thinks she’d still be able to recognize Ben Solo’s voice. At this point, it practically resonates in her bones. 

From behind her, she hears the door close and his heavy footsteps as he moves toward the bar. 

“Your mom send you to fetch me, kid?” a gravelly voice asks. This, Rey quickly deduces, is Grey-Hair at the bar. She turns her head slightly to the left until she can see them out of the corner of her eye. 

She didn’t get a good look at the older guy earlier, but now that Rey can make out his face, and especially now that Ben is staring down at him—with a familiar slightly-aggrieved expression—Rey can see that Grey-Hair bears a striking resemblance to her boss-slash-crush. Same prominent nose, same thick sweep of hair, though the older man’s is shorter than Ben’s. There’s also something in his eyes, a sort of sly gleam that Rey feels like she’s seen every so often echoed in Ben. Granted, it’s usually when he’s delighting in the mistakes of others. But Rey’s also seen it once or twice when she makes a particularly good gibe at Poe or Mitaka in Finance. 

So, this is Leia’s husband, the famed but often-absent Han Solo. She’s heard plenty of things about him, but in her time working with Starbird, has never actually seen him in the office or at a single external function. Leia often mentions him traveling, a wistful, tired look deepening the lines on her face.

“She thought you’d probably forget we have reservations with Lando and Jannah for dinner,” Ben says.

“I have a phone, you know.”

“Yeah, dad,” Ben replies, pulling what appears to be the phone in question from the pocket of his own jacket. His leather jacket. A jacket she’s never seen before and certainly didn’t realize he owned.

Rey whips her head back toward her knitting, feeling her face flush with this small discovery. Ben is wearing a black leather jacket, and—good god—is he trying to kill her? It’s just un-fucking-fair of him. Really.

“I would have figured it out eventually,” she hears Han grumble. There’s a deep indecipherable muttering, and without looking, Rey assumes this to be Bigfoot speaking up from beside Han.

Ben chuckles in response right as Han loudly insists that, no, he absolutely always figures it out.

And as amused as Rey is by all of this, she is also trying to stay still and unnoticeable over in her corner of the bar. Because she did not mentally prepare herself for a run-in with her damn crush tonight. Especially not in a weird, East Village knitting bar where she’s working on—shit!—his somewhat-surprise sweater gift. Slowly, Rey drags her tote bag over into her lap, and begins carefully packing away all traces of blue, white, and gold yarn. This, of course, catches the eye of Cassian. 

“You are not leaving so soon?” His voice isn’t loud, but it also isn’t quiet. Rey’s eyes dart back toward the bar where Ben is still talking to Han, Bigfoot, and Maz. 

“Yeah, I just remembered that I have to get going,” she replies, keeping her voice even and low. 

“Oh, don’t go so soon. Just one more round?” Jyn offers, her smile wide and warm. And Rey, she really wants to stay. Jyn and Cassian are nice, and she’s actually having a good time now that she’s feeling more comfortable. But a large part of her wants to get out of the bar as quickly as possible to avoid any awkward confron—

“Maz! Can we get another round to entice Rey here to stick around?” Cassian shouts toward the bar.

She hears Ben pause in what he’s saying to his father. She can almost picture him turning his head in their direction. He might even recognize the particular way she often wears her hair and then run through the odds of such a run-in. And maybe he’d think about saying hi, or maybe he’d just go back to his own conversation. Then, they would never need to mention this again.

“Rey?” Ben says, curious. 

Jyn gives her a strange look before Rey closes her eyes, breathes deeply, and turns around. 

She forces her mouth into a smile, hoping it looks easy and normal. Something tugs at the corner of Ben’s mouth, and his face seems to relax ever-so-slightly. 

“Hey, Ben,” she replies. 

He takes a few steps toward her, a strange, wondering expression in his eyes. It’s clear that he’s equally in awe of the unlikely machinations of fate that brought them both here this evening. 

Rey stands, almost without thinking, and then immediately feels at a loss with what to do with herself. With where to put her hands or even where to look. Because looking at Ben is a lot right now. The leather jacket, now that she can fully take in the effect is good. Really good. He’s entirely pulling off the whole dark jeans, faded grey shirt and black leather look. To Rey’s great joy and distress. It’s all making her a bit dry-mouthed and even more acutely aware of the attraction she feels toward him.

“I’ll get that round,” she hears Maz say from what feels like a great distance. Everything feels a bit distant right now actually. Strange that. 

“What are you doing here?” Ben says, and then seems to rethink the question. “I mean, obviously you can be here; you can be wherever you want. I just, I wasn’t expecting you here.” All of this is said quickly, and Rey’s pretty sure she hears a gravelly chuckle from the direction of the bar. 

“Knitting,” she replies, gesturing vaguely toward the table with Jyn and Cassian. Internally she’s trying to shut off the panic of wondering if she looks weird and why she didn’t say anything else and, seriously, where the hell do hands go when you’re talking? How do humans function at all? She finally gives up and just puts her hands in her pockets.

Ben’s eyes drift over toward the corner table, and they linger with obvious recognition. Ben seems strangely comfortable here, with Maz definitely. Rey wonders how well he knows the others. 

“Right, yeah,” he says, looking back at her. “You mentioned you were knitting a lot.” He smiles at her, then a beat of silence passes, and Rey feels like she’s physically restraining herself from compulsively filling it with an inane comment. Ben breathes. “I was just here, to see my dad.” 

Rey leans slightly to the right and immediately makes eye contact with Han Solo, who is clearly watching this car crash of a social interaction with evident delight. He waves a hand at her, smirking, and Rey lifts her own in return. 

“Does he knit?” she asks, even though the mental image of Han Solo and a pair of knitting needles feels immediately absurd. But, hey, who is she to judge? Maybe he does. Maybe Ben does?

“No, definitely not. He’s not . . . well, he’s not a crafting type. Neither is my mom, honestly. But they’ve both known Maz for forever, so he comes here to drink pretty often. As long as she’s run this place. My parents are just around the corner actually, in this loft they’ve owned since the 70s.” Ben takes a deep breath, as if he’s just realized he’s rambling. 

Seriously, just when Rey thinks she has him figured out—first as the mean silent tech bro, then as the sometimes warm, but still self-assured boss—he turns around and becomes this awkward fridge of a man who seems to struggle almost as much as she does with basic human interaction. 

Rey smiles down at her feet because she definitely doesn’t want him to think she’s laughing at him. But he’s sort of charmingly awkward, and she’s completely disarmed by it. 

“I’m rambling, sorry,” he says, quietly. Rey looks up and sees he’s running his hand through his hair again. She smiles at him. 

“I don’t mind.” 

The confession is quiet, but Ben definitely catches, based on the way he pauses, and then grins at her. One of his rare, crooked teeth grins that makes her feel a bit shaky and nervous and excited all at the same time. 

The moment is broken when a hand claps Ben on the shoulder. Han, looking genuinely a bit sorry, sidles into view. 

“Alright, kid, as much as I hate to interrupt”—he looks at Rey, and then back at Ben with exaggeratedly raised eyebrows—“we both know your mother will make our lives miserable if we don’t get going.” 

Ben breaks eye contact with Rey to stare down at the floor for a beat, and when he looks back up at his dad, he nods once, his eyes a bit dimmer. 

“Rey, was it?” Han says, addressing her. He sticks out a hand, and Rey grips it firmly, giving it a shake. “Lovely meeting you. You work with Leia, right? We should have you over for dinner sometime—all three of us.”

“Dad,” Ben sighs from beside Han, sounding like nothing more than the petulant teenager Rey imagines he must have been. 

That gleam—that Solo gleam—is back in Han’s eyes as he makes a humming noise and smiles at Rey, then wanders toward the bar to say his goodbyes. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Rey,” Ben says, and though she knows he knows he will, there’s something like a question to the way he phrases it. Something hopeful.

“Yeah,” Rey nods, and then, before she can stop the words from escaping her mouth, she adds, “Looking forward to it.”

Ben’s mouth hangs open, ever so slightly—just a whisper of space between his obscenely beautiful lips—before he grins again. Her favorite expression. 

“Yeah.” 

It’s a whisper, an exhalation, really. But the sound and shape of it stays with Rey, keeping her warm, for the rest of the evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recently jabbered a friend at work after posting the first chapter of this fic, and said: 
> 
> “I’m me circa 2004. only now I write fanfiction about AU space babies who see therapists and do anxiety-mediating craft projects”
> 
> A whole damn mood I'm not mad about.
> 
> Catch me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/PersephoneBound)


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